‘With the king’s support, Nisos founded his own school of magic, and trained many sorcerers, until he had far more studying his new, simpler way than the true path. Meanwhile Palemon was making stronger weapons and armor than anything seen before and training his warriors relentlessly in combat. He began to enlarge his borders, one tribe or chiefdom at a time. Every enemy he captured, warrior or civilian, was enslaved and collared, and fought for him or died. He waged war against larger nations, gambling on the fate of huge battles. But his enemies didn’t have what he had. Palemon had sorcery at his disposal, and he had Nisos, the most talented and ambitious sorcerer of them all. With magic and might, they were able to conquer the world.’

As Zedo spoke, Chloe remembered the tales from her childhood. Palemon was always a wise king, the man who brought peace to the world, the hero who fought the eldren and won. But after making friends among the eldren – Liana, Zachary, and Eiric, to name a few – she had often wondered who the true villain had been.

‘Palemon was a proud king, but Nisos was even more ruthless and arrogant. When the expanding Aleuthean Empire brushed up against the eldren, Nisos, who now called himself an archmagus, was astounded to discover their abilities, and immediately began to conduct experiments.’

‘Experiments?’

The magus nodded. ‘Nisos discovered that when collared, an eldran could not change his form. If an eldran was in his normal shape, or the shape of a giant, or a dragon, he would stay that way. Nisos then discovered something else. The collar would also prevent him turning wild.’

Chloe’s eyes widened. She cast her mind back to when she’d first met Triton, the late, self-proclaimed king of the eldren, in the cells below the sun king’s palace in Lamara, again seeing the collar around his neck. Eiric had also been collared when she and Liana had rescued him at the heart of Cinder Fen, now Sindara. She’d known that a collar could weaken the eldren, robbing them of their ability to change their form. But she’d never thought of the effect a metal collar might have on one already changed.

‘Of all of the forms eldren could take, dragons most fascinated both Palemon and Nisos. They knew that with dragons at their disposal, the most far-flung reaches of their empire would never have the courage to break away. But although Nisos possessed collared dragons, he could not force them to do his bidding. So even as Palemon waged war against the eldren – a war of enslavement, rather than conquest – Nisos studied the problem relentlessly.’

Chloe realized that the stories had never been clear on one thing. How had the war between the Aleutheans and the eldren started? What had they been fighting over?